1. Field of the Disclosure
The present disclosure relates to a liquid crystal display (LCD), and more particularly, to a photo-luminescent (PL)-LCD with high light utilization efficiency.
2. Description of the Related Art
LCDs are non-emissive displays that require a separate backlight unit and red, green, and blue color filters for pixels to display a color image on a screen.
The red, green, and blue color filters respectively separate white light emitted from the backlight unit into red, green, and blue lights. The red, green, and blue color filters each transmit only light of a specific wavelength, which is one third of that of white light, resulting in significant optical loss. Thus, a high luminance backlight unit is required to produce an image with sufficient luminance.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,822,144 and 4,830,469 disclose PL LCDs using phosphors excited by ultraviolet (UV) light and having higher light utilization efficiency than LCDs using color filters.
Also, in U.S. Patent Publication No. 2002/0145,685, Regina et al. propose a PL LCD using a backlight unit and red and green phosphors. Blue color is obtained by switching light paths using liquid crystals instead of a color filter or phosphors. The red and green phosphors are excited by blue backlight emitted from the backlight unit.
The drawback of the proposed PL LCD is that it has a narrow viewing angle and orientation because light emitted from a blue pixel has a polarization component. The blue pixel with the polarization component and narrow viewing angle has different optical characteristics than red and green pixels with no polarization component and a wide viewing angle.
The phosphors for the red and green pixels are excited by light emitted by the backlight unit as well as by ambient light incident from an external light source since the ambient light also contains blue UV light. The UV light contained in the ambient light unnecessarily excites the phosphors without contributing to displaying an image on the LCD, thereby degrading a contrast ratio.
Thus, research concerning improving light utilization efficiency is required to obtain a high quality image.